Meet the wearable that controls your TV while you sleep

Virgin Media teams up with teenage prodigies

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Virgin Media has teamed up with two students to solve one of the greatest problems of our time: falling asleep in front of the TV and missing your favourite shows.

Although Brits watch around four hours of festive TV on Christmas day, the combination of big meals and plenty of Christmas booze means we usually miss up to 51.3 million viewing hours of television by drifting off into a post-lunch snooze.

Two students from Manchester Creative Studio, Ryan Oliver, 15, and Jonathan Kingsley, 14, worked with Virgin Media to create a 3D printed wristband which includes a pulse-oximeter sensor.

This can sense when the wearer is awake or asleep. If the wearer drifts off the wearable, known as the KipstR, will pause the Virgin Media TiVo box, recording the TV show you were watching.

Sweet dreams for telly addicts

Once you wake up, the KipstR can tell the TiVo box to resume playback so you don't miss a second of your favourite show.

The current KipstR prototype features using a spark core chip, pulse-oximeter, push button, sleep mode indicator and a small LiPo battery. In the future the KipstR band could monitor the wearer's emotional reactions to TV viewing, helping TiVo to find programs that will appeal to you.